Using social media for marketing

Using social media for marketing can be a slower way of getting your online sales at first. Social media is there for interaction with people and to share information. What people do not like, is to be sold to. People like to buy from people and with social media, you can build up trust, share free information and show yourself as an authority.

I use social media for marketing and I’ll go through some of the platforms that I like to use to get my content lots of attention from the right places.

• Facebook. I love to use Facebook for prospecting leads. I target Facebook groups that are appropriate to my niche or marketplace and look at the people commenting and ‘liking’ content on the page. If that person is indicating that they need a solution to a problem and I think I can provide that solution then I will introduce myself and start a conversation. I never go in for the sell though, and simply talk about the subject in hand first. After bouncing some messages back and forth and giving some free information to them, I will slowly introduce my product or service to their attention.
• Pinterest is a new addition to my social portfolio. Using Pinterest for marketing is great because millions of people use it and it is totally different from other sharing sites. It’s based on the idea of you having an online notice board and you ‘pin’ content to it. The content can be images, blog content or video. People can follow you and share your Pinterest content on Facebook. I really like it because it’s visual and the layout looks good and clean. You can link the images to where you want to send the person looking at your content.
• Stumbleupon gets me loads of traffic to my blog. Once I’ve completed my blog post and published it, I will bookmark it onto Stumbleupon. How Stumbleupon works is that the user will log in and choose a category and ask the site to find it an interesting site or blog within that category. Once your site or blog post comes up then the user can share it with friends on facebook or other sharing sites. This particular site works out very well for me.
• Digg is one of the sites that has a lot of authority on Google. You can post your blog content on there and also add friends. By having your content ‘dugg’ it is like a voting system and the most diggs that a site gets then they get onto Digg’s homepage and get a ton of traffic!

Using social media for marketing needs different approaches for different platforms. On Twitter, for instance, there are marketers putting their sales links everywhere and it’s allowed. But, just because it’s allowed, it doesn’t mean it works! Do you like to be sold to by a stranger? What do you think when someone direct messages you with a link for their company or product?

So, when you’re using interaction sites like Facebook and Twitter, don’t stomp in with your boots and and get selling. Look at the site that you are using and do what the ‘locals’ are doing. Be respectful and develop friendships first. It won’t be long before your new friends are asking you what you do and then the door is open for that particular conversation.

With sites like Pinterest and Digg, you can post your content which is linked to your site and you’ll get traffic. So use as many bookmarking sites as you possibly can because you can never have too much traffic

I hope this content does help you to generate leads online. See you next time!

Keep smiling

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Adrian Whitworth

Skype: adrianjohnwhitworth

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